Beauty, Mercy, Justice

Conservative?

I always find it ironic that those in the U.S. who call themselves conservatives are actually often the most hostile to tradition. An example that I just came across is this article by Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, published there last fall. Henninger writes (quoting a German immigrant to the U.S.):

I could not do in Europe what I did here. A European at the age of 25, with little money but a lot of ambition and ideas, could not expect to move outside his own country–move to say the center of France, or the center of Italy, Belgium or any other country–and have much prospect of succeeding. He would remain an outsider.

This is the roots argument. In America, the Jamestown settlers hit the ground running in 1607, and their descendants have kept moving for nearly 400 years, high on change. Lucky us. In Europe, every village and town has roots that run 1,000 or more years deep. Past some point, maybe World War I, pulling up one’s roots became unthinkable. Tough luck for the young Ray Ozzies in the historic towns of Europe, yearning to be ‘quick’ and ‘decisive.’

Although I would not defend the often statist economic policies of Europe, still, there seems to be a sense in which place, family, tradition matter there, while here "conservatives" are often among the first to scorn and jettison such things if they get in the way of economic growth.

Isn’t that the nature of the beast though? I mean, as Americans, our ancestors thumbed their noses at tradition (perhaps in the name of religious freedom, yes, but it was a thumbing of the nose) and crossed the ocean to settle here. We have rootlessness in our blood, it would seem.

Satan’s main mode of operation on this earth seems to be by way of separation: separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of sex; separation of economic activity from its natural purpose; separation of parents, and especially mothers, from their children; separation of home from work; separation of those who support economic justice from those who support sanity with regard to sexual behavior. And with regard to the European childlessness, here we have another separation: separation of those who realize the good of children from those who have some sense of rootedness and tradition.

Satan’s main mode of operation on this earth seems to be by way of separation…

This is an excellent post. Another example of this separation of idea from fact is the words ‘social justice’ or ‘envionmentalism’ – using these words will immediately get you ‘pegged’ as lax on Christian doctrine. Many people simply cannot hear these words without shutting off their brain. The devil has worked overtime to destroy the meaning of these words.

Another example is how birth control for Catholics has simply been replaced by NFP. The devil prevents folk from absorbing the idea that children are a gift, a good thing. NFP is then simply sold as a replacement for birth control in order to avoid those nasty little parasites called children. The American dream must go on.

This blows me away as I have seen complete agnostics ‘get it’ regarding how awesome having children are alongside of hard-core Catholics actually believe NFP is a statement of virtue. The devil is one smart dude.

Americans have rootlessness in their blood, but I think this is more a matter of “religion” in the broad sense than of the fact that our ancestors came here from elsewhere.

Though wandering or the pioneer spirit have been part of the American thing since the beginning, there have been counter traditions. The 19th century saw attempts at settlement, among German groups in particular but also others in the Middle West, who came to the U.S. for religious reasons. The ideal was to keep the religious/cultural group intact, a goal for which settlement and rootedness are essential means. The South culturally tended toward settlement, though it experienced its pioneer phase and never entirely divorced itself from it.

The North, however, more deeply imbibed the notion that human happiness is largely economic or the fruit of economic endeavor; and so land and home became commodities rather than the necessary material foundation of a social and cultural group. One reads accounts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries of families establishing farms only to sell them at a profit a few years later and then to move on.

Today, though economics often forces people to move even several times throughout their lives, the first consideration often in whether or not to stay put amongst one’s extended family and in one’s native region is not even economic necessity but economic advantage. A better paying job often trumps family and friendship and the local common good from which one has benefited and to which, I would argue, one has a duty.

Although Tom’s observation is broadly accurate, I have to point out that I’m one of the few people associated with Caelum et Terra who is willing to be tagged as a conservative (although I often add “for lack of a better word”), and I think I’m the only one who’s lived in the state where he was born pretty much his whole life. (“Pretty much” refers to one period of less than a year.) This was a deliberate choice on my part (and my wife’s) in the interest of family continuity. Most of our married life (almost thirty years now) has been spent in physical proximity to either my family or hers.

More importantly, let’s note the irony: almost everybody who latches on to whatever CetT is/was all about, radical Catholicism, strongly traditionalist Catholicism, or anything along these lines, is making a definite break with the recent past and with the society around him.

Let’s face it, most of us are Americans, too, and even the act of turning toward tradition has for us a strong element of American restlessness and Huck-Finn-style lighting out for the territories.

“No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?”

The narrator remarks the little danger there is that any villager should rob Silas’ hoarded gold: “How could they have spent the money in their own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to ‘run away,’ a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.”

I know, sort of random, but I started reading it this week and found these lines interesting.

“Let’s face it, most of us are Americans, too, and even the act of turning toward tradition has for us a strong element of American restlessness and Huck-Finn-style lighting out for the territories.”

I rather see it as being out in the territories and making the sensible decision to go home to civilization. There is nothing particularly American about turning towards tradition; it is simply the human longing for human and homely things. There is nothing American about restlessness for Truth; it was the North African/Roman Augustin who noted that “our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

You grew up in Alabama; I, in the Los Angeles suburbs, the epitomy of modernity. Believe me, there is nothing to turn from in such a place, for it is not a place! Even if you stay put in the same house you were born in, everything and everyone around you changes so much that it is as if you had moved — like Dorothy being blown from Kansas to the that treacle-town of Oz. But nothing so exotic.

Here I am blabbing away on the web, but never the less(I feel pretty safe no ones going to read what I write anyway), isn’t it the point to make ourselves as unnoticeable as possible for the good of those who we have responsibility for?

And in that regard, lighting out is defense via retreat to more friendly territories.

“isn’t it the point to make ourselves as unnoticeable as possible for the good of those who we have responsibility for?”

He must have been paying attention to John the Baptist last week when he said “I must decrease”.

Such is the way to live in and for the good of our community. It is especially important for those of us who are fathers and mothers to remember that the primary community which we serve is our own family. The “discipline of place” as Caleb Stegall calls it is secondary.

There is a difference between what one does in extraordinary circumstances and what should be the normal course of things. There may be times when one should light out for the territories — but that doesn’t mean that instability should be considered the norm for human society. Americans have created a culture of instability. I can’t see that this is a good thing. It’s one of the reasons that modern American culture is so ugly.

The “discipline of place” may be secondary, but that is not to say it is not important or even vital. We can’t so isolate what is called the “nuclear family” so as to make it some self-sufficient entity. It is not. It is dependent, and most ideally dependent on a network, first, of kin, then on the wider community rooted and committed to a place. Destroy these, and you end up with the nuclear family, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of strangers, and either helpless in grave adversity or dependent on impersonal entities, such as government bureaucracies.

Human beings aren’t individuals as much as they are persons meant to dwell in committed interrelation with others — not only one’s wife and children, but with one’s kindred and one’s neighbors. In the Odyssey, Odysseus knows the horror of exile; even though he was given the chance to become divine, living eternally with the beautiful goddess Kalypso, he chooses mortality among his people. He knew that a man without a people is not fully a man.

What is it that will draw family to remain or return to a home? In the town of Butte it seems to be tied to ethnicity and suffering. A mining community that suffered through terrible mine disasters, economic hardships, and whose roots are tied to Ireland. “Don’t stop in the US but go right to Butte” was the word for the immigrants arriving in the 19th and early 20th Century. The President of Ireland just stopped here a few weeks ago. Retired people move back here because their friends are here. An interesting community in a State that is full of “transplants” (including me)although my first 3 children are native Montanans. Our mantra in the early 70s was “Don’t Californicate Montana”, though none of us who uttered that were native to the State. Even a transplant can set roots. Houses still face each other on narrow streets and over everything looms “the pit” the largest super-fund site in the US. But the locals keep returning……..and the town is solid union, Catholic, and liberal. An interesting garden for the former rootless.

Ditto–great comment, Christopher. And just in case I’m being misunderstood, I certainly don’t believe a culture of instability is a good thing. Just that we’re all probably more infected with it than we realize.

We are all infected with it. Many’s the time I think how I would like to move from California — and I can think of some pretty good reasons to do so. Friends have suggested Ohio to me over the last six months, and I have felt the temptation. But, then, pride asserts itself, and I think, “won’t you look stupid to up and move for no real good reason after you’ve been blathering on about stability! What commitment!” And that’s the problem, as I see it, with us modern Americans. We shy from commitment; and we all shy from it, to varying degrees. We might not all be ready to leave our wives, but we are willing to leave our homes often just to scratch an itch or to follow a fantasy.

Mr Zehnder writes: “There is a difference between what one does in extraordinary circumstances and what should be the normal course of things There may be times when one should light out for the territories — but that doesn’t mean that instability should be considered the norm for human society.”

While it’s good to understand the nature of an object in itself, i.e. that which is proper to man as political animal, that is “the normal course of things” because prudence acts according to standard, but such standard is far from our norm, and it’s imprudent to act as if we are anything other than far from that which is natural to man.

For instance, Thomas Fleming’s position concerning Terry Schiavo was, and still is, completely bizarre in most respects, but he is correct to point out that we live in enemy territory and to expect those in authority to act according to the good is highly imprudent. If you notice, many of the arguments centered on the government acting according to the good when such an expectation was and is fruitless.

I don’t know about your circumstance, we as a family are virtually never anything other than isolated in the desert wasteland. We’re surrounded by people, constantly interacting with them, but we drive to the Fraternity parish for a weekly cup of social interactive reinvigorating fruitful water.

What difference does it make where one lives in the wasteland? Place is knowable in relation to a fixed object, where is the fixed object in the wasteland?

Mr. Zehnder writes: “Destroy these, and you end up with the nuclear family, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of strangers, and either helpless in grave adversity or dependent on impersonal entities, such as government bureaucracies.”

And isn’t the above the exact circumstance which exists? And exists intentionally? Is there anyplace to look and not see this destruction being furthered? Save one? City urban planning. There’s a strong movement in urban planning to reestablish mixed use pedestrian oriented neighborhoods which are ordered towards human scale. And one of original leaders of this shift was Tom Hayden as mayor of Santa Monica.

What this movement in urban planning signifies is man’s natural inclinations to form social life at human scale, but such a neighborhood is even less friendly an environment because while it is cohesive, the bonds of cohesion are antithetical to Catholic life. A Catholic is better off hidden in the wasteland.

I agree with BMJ: People came to America not because they rejected their roots but because the traditions gave them no opportunity to be economically comfortable.
Supporting a family comfortably is not greed, but a good. Too many “green” types in the US have no idea about what poverty means, or how their policies might mean poor people of the third world will remain quaint people working 12 hours a day to plant rice by hand rather than using modern fertilizer, modern pesticides, hand plows and high yield hybrids..

You also lump together several desparate groups as if they all believed the same thing.
Conservative has several meanings. One is libertarianism (keep the government’s regulations out of my life and business), another is social conservatism (allow religious people to express themselves in the public square, even if majority opinions eg gay marriage abortion opinions are influenced by religious belief.
I think you are mixing this up with the RINO Republicans, who support multinational corporations, big busines, and the religion of the NWO.

I think that terms need to be redefined. The ‘Conservatives’ of today are really Classical Liberals, who place a particular emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual, with private property rights being seen as essential to individual liberty.

‘Liberals’ on the other hand are the true Conservatives, refusing to change, and keeping the failed practices of the past on the front.

On more comment: this post indirectly addresses “church hopping” – religious and individualism and adventure the American shopper way (a far cry from family and community the traditional Christian way).

In Catholic canon law and tradition, a person is geographically tied to his parish – neither a priest or laity can change it (a bishop could but why?). This had been the European norm until Protestantism set the stage for ‘picking’ a church. Today in the AmChurch everyone seems to do it, liberal or conservative.

So many Christian things simply don’t make sense in American culture – a wedding, for example, is supposed to involve the community. Today, there rarely is a community to engage.

I’m not sure if you are disagreeing with me or not. My point has been that the modern American rootlessness is a bad thing, while admitting that rootlessness may be forced on one or be a necessity of choice in a particular situation. It seems we don’t disagree here.

Where we perhaps disagree is in this. Despite the rootlessness of society, I think one should strive to make a stand for stability. One should do what he can to make a home and place for himself and his family. I grant it might be quixotic, but that is all the more reason to do it. As St. Benedict recognized in the meltdown culture of his day, stability is vastly important for the life of virtue. It teaches one patience, solidifies a spirit of commitment, tames the flightiness of whim; it grounds one. Just as monogamy tempers desire, so does commitment to place help one overcome the the deception that he can be happy if only he were elsewhere. Wanderlust is perhaps fine for a young man; but maturity should cast it off.

One also has a duty to the common good of his neighbors, whether they be Catholic or not. There’s more to consider than our own salvation, though that does have to take first place. But close behind it is the duty we owe to those around whom we live. Each of us has been given gifts by which we are to save our souls but also serve our brothers. And those brothers are precisely those among whom we live. Our friendship for them cannot merely be a one-night stand, a function of convenience. It cannot be shallow, but must partake a serious fidelity.

So, in sum, though we live in a wasteland, we must live as if it were not a wasteland. We must, as much as we can, foster the virtue of stability in ourselves, despite the world. Who knows, but maybe our example will inspire others and we can be the beginning of a recovery. We may fail in what we strive to do; so be it. But we shouldn’t preclude victory by failing to try.

Actually, what I’m attempting to understand is your stress on place as material location.

Our family has very little culturally in common with those neighbors were are in physical close proximity to, but have great deal in common with certain families in the Fraternity parish. Which community do we more properly live in? The personal parish community? Or the materially proximate community?

Doesn’t the formal take precedence over the material? But yet you appear to stress the material over the formal, why?

I don’t stress the material over the formal in regards to place; I see them inextricably linked, like the soul and body in man. A real, integral human community requires proximity. I know people speak of cyber communities — like this blog — but that can only be community by analogy. There is a common good with such a community; truth, for instance. But it is not the fullness of the common good.

The more distant people are from one another in terms of physical place, the less they partake of neighborhood and all that implies: a kind of community of mutual aid, not only in terms of social interaction, but in terms of the daily exigencies of life. Physical proximity allows one to help his neighbor in the smallest details of life; in his sickness or if his plumbing leaks, or if his barn needs raising. It allows for those thousands of daily contacts that create friendship or force one to forebearance. It destroys that anonymity that breeds vice. It makes for that mutual rubbing against one another and with one’s environment that germinates a unique, local culture. It really makes for an extension of the family into the broader community. Of course there are bad things that come from it too, as in all human things. But such a community is *the* human thing, the foundation of human character.

While I admit the distinction between form and matter, it usually only exists in the mind. It’s a mental distinction of principles that actually exist, not in isolation, but in unity. One can distinguish the form of man, say, from Franklin Salazar or Christopher Zehnder; but the human form exists only in beings like Franklin Salazar and Christopher Zehnder.The distinction exists only in the mind, not in re. The same, I say, goes for community. The fullness of community exists in neighborhood; all other communities, sicut dixt Philosophus, fall away obliquely.

You have previously written of yourself being culturally isolated where you are a man among strangers.

An Athenian is not accidentally among Athenians, and a Zehnder is not accidentally among other Zehnders. But it is accidental to an Athenian or a Zehnder that he be among these strangers as opposed to those strangers. An Athenian or Zehnder among strangers is as the wayfarer where it’s accidental to the wayfarer that the he be among these strangers as opposed to those strangers.

This accident of place among strangers is a material difference because unity of culture causes place to cease being accidental and to become formal because culture is the form of the community which causes the individuals to be in place. other than accidentally.

In a personal parish there’s a material locus which is the parish church which establishes place from which the parishioners are attached via unity of culture but where the material is lacking because of proximity of the parishioners. It can’t be a real parish or community because the matter is unsuitable because of distance, but approximates community because there is a material coming together once a week with the formation of community via culture.

In other words, if we want to establish community, we can’t do it with physical proximity alone, just as we can’t do it with unity of culture alone. Those who have unity of culture aren’t strangers when in physical proximity, such as a personal parish, but neither are they fully a community because proximity is prerequisite. But it’s not possible to have community where unity of culture is lacking and thus it makes more sense to seek out unity of culture as a locus because physical proximity can be overcome by change of physical location such as moving to Ohio. With moving to Ohio as understood as moving to a Catholic community.

If one wants to be the leaven among the pagans so be it, but it’s not a community but remains what it is, :leaven among pagans.

My point merely is that without stability in a place there cannot be a true human community. Local stability is the necessary prerequisite to any kind of culture — unless, perhaps, one belongs to a nomadic tribe.

I think too one can have a community, a “people,” even if all members are not Catholic. It will be highly imperfect, but it would still be a community. There would still be a common culture of habits and memory and a common good. A Catholic in such a community would be something of a stranger; but, then, in the best of communities, even monasteries, we are all wayfarers and strangers insofar as our eternal destiny is concerned. We just don’t want to be wayfarers and strangers in every other sense as well.